May 5th, 2010 by Lincoln Baxter III

JSF 2.0 Cross-field Form Validation – Simple in Reality

I’d like to start by saying that using JSF by itself can sometimes feel trying to pull your own teeth out with a pair of tweezers, but there’s hope. JSF was designed to be a platform of extensions – a foundation for building web-frameworks, and that it’s done very well. JSF 2.0 addresses most of the concerns about usability (so there’s less tooth pulling,) and provides even more extensibility. That’s where Seam Faces comes in, that’s where PrettyFaces comes in. On many occasions you might find yourself needing to compare the values of multiple input fields on a given page submit: confirming a password; re-enter password; address lookups; and so on. Performing cross-field form validation is simple – just place Seam’s <s:validateForm> component in the form you wish to validate, then attach your custom Validator.
April 23rd, 2010 by Lincoln Baxter III

Seam Faces 3.0.0.Alpha3 – JSF 2.0 just got even easier!

Ever wondered why JSF doesn’t support bean @Inject-ion in Converters or Validators? Ever wondered how to listen to a single PhaseEvent or ComponentSystemEvent, or filter on events by componentId, or view? Ever wondered why you can’t just @Inject FacesContext, or NavigationHandler?

Well… now you can, with the brand-new, just-out release of Seam Faces — 3.0.0.Alpha3

<dependency>
 <groupId>org.jboss.seam.faces</groupId>
 <artifactId>seam-faces</artifactId>
 <version>3.0.0.Alpha3</version>
</dependency>

March 23rd, 2010 by Lincoln Baxter III

Using Embedded Glassfish with Maven

Three steps to add Embedded GlassFish to any existing project POM. The Embedded Glassfish project is hosted on java.net, and as it is described, is very simple: “This project develops APIs and tools around “embedded GlassFish v3″. Embedded GFv3 is a delivery vehicle of GFv3 so that applications and tools can use GFv3 just as a library, inside their JVM, instead of having GFv3 as the overload of the entire JVM process. (And no, embedded GFv3 is not meant to be run on JavaME.)”
March 17th, 2010 by Lincoln Baxter III

Why doesn’t (JPA, JMS, JTA, EJB, JSF, CDI) work? JEE is “Too Complicated”

First, before reading this – you’re going to be upset with me. You’re going to disagree. I know — it’s OK. You may not even believe me, but you might keep reading because anger inspires action.

January 28th, 2010 by Derek Hollis

One year’s time

It is amazing what can be done in exactly one year’s time.  January 17th will have been the 2nd anniversary since Lincoln Baxter and I started OcpSoft.  It’s been one seriously fun, and wild, ride with JavaServer Faces and the open-source community.  I want to take a moment to talk about my partner’s success story and what he has accomplished in just one short year.
January 20th, 2010 by Lincoln Baxter III

JSF 1.2 Components (Book Review)

As a vocal blogger, I feel responsible for promoting and sharing the good work of others, whether that be technology, creative work, or in this case: a book. I will take no exception to that philosophy when it comes to the JavaServer Faces framework. For a quick read, try the summary. If you are intrigued, read on! I hope you find this review valuable.
December 19th, 2009 by Lincoln Baxter III

What a wild ride – My journey through OpenSource / JSF

It was about one year prior to this article that I wrote “JSF2 is in good hands”, in which I spoke about the upcoming release of JavaServer™ Faces 2, and how the community had changed immensely in the few years I’d been using the tool. There were changes I wanted to make, and started making them by publishing an open source extension called PrettyFaces. PrettyFaces lets you map Pretty URLs to any resource within a JSF-based web-application (eg: /example -> /faces/examples/page.xhtml). While this is stuff that other web-frameworks have been doing for years, (WordPress, Rails/Grails, etc) it’s stuff that has traditionally been hard using JavaServer Faces – until around November 2008, when the first release was published. Now, I’m relatively new to this arena – I entered the open source community for the first time about four years ago, working on PHP and Perl modules. I’ve been using it, and appreciating it, for almost my entire life in the industry, but never giving back. I suppose one question that many people ask is, “Will working on open source software get me anywhere in my career?”
December 14th, 2009 by Lincoln Baxter III

A winter tale of Java Server Faces

As a member of the JSF 2 expert group, I’ve stated that my primary goal is to make JSF, and J2EE, more accessible to the community at large, to reach out and make sure that people’s voices are heard, and that what we are doing makes sense. I’ve only been part of the group for a little under a year, but I’ve met some pretty cool people, and you’d be surprised at how interested they all are to hear your story. Here’s an email from David Geary (a long-time EG member) to the Expert Group, that I think paints a very nice picture of people’s reaction to JSF and JSF2, author of Core Java Server Faces (Core JSF):
December 2nd, 2009 by Lincoln Baxter III

JSF2 – Engaging the Community

JSF2 is an amazing web-framework, and as part of our initiative to engage the community, Dan Allen, Andy Schwartz, Kito Mann, the rest of the Expert Group, and I have been putting together a “JSF Root Node” (as Ed Burns put it.) A website to be the first place people go to when they think of JSF.

September 14th, 2009 by Lincoln Baxter III

JSF2: How to add the magic of EL (EL2) to JSF

Ever wonder why you can’t pass parameters to EL method-expressions? Well, now you can, and it’s easy to incorporate!